Reza Aslan, Fox News, and Bulverism

You’ve probably seen a clip of it already: Fox News aired a cringe-worthy interview of the author of the latest Jesus tell-all book on Friday, much to the delight of many on the internet. In the now-viral interview, Fox News anchor and religion correspondent Lauren Green shows zero interest in the arguments or content of scholar Reza Aslan’s new book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

Instead, she leads off the interview with “You’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?” Aslan’s eyebrows threaten to rise right off of his face, but he comports himself honorably in a painful ten-minute conversation that never moves past this misguided line of questioning: “It still begs the question though, why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?”

But even if Green’s line of questioning weren’t laced with xenophobia, ignorant about the purpose of scholarship, or breathtakingly incurious, it would still be problematic. There is a deeper philosophical problem behind focusing on the fact that Aslan is a Muslim.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument the following: Reza Aslan brings personal biases and prejudices from his Muslim faith to his study of the historical Jesus; the liberal media is breathlessly excited by Aslan’s book, even though it merely rehashes debates that have been going on in historical Jesus studies for decades, because that media tends to be hostile to traditional Christian faith.

In fact, there may very well be reason to believe those things. But to think that they have anything to do with the merits of Aslan’s arguments about Jesus is to engage in a logical fallacy that C.S. Lewis called Bulverism. He explains:

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly… Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.

Bulverism a great way to score points while getting no closer to the truth, and it comprises perhaps 95% of writing about religion on the internet.

If you’re actually interested in Zealot, you shouldn’t care about Aslan, or Fox, but about the man from Galilee: what was he like? what did he teach? was he the Christ? If you’re looking for answers to that question, Aslan’s Muslim faith, Fox’s hostility, and any number of dreary facts about America’s cultural grievances are strictly irrelevant.

Textual criticism and and historical methodology can be boring and hard. Questioning motives and feigning outrage is always fun and easy, and serves as a particularly shallow way for people to engage in intellectual triage. That’s why interesting subjects only suffer when they get dragged into the culture wars.

And it’s why I’m going to try to keep reading my way through Zealot, as well as more orthodox takes like NT Wright‘s.

I am always amused at how one example characterizes a whole. It is common for interviewers to start with a brash question. It is also unprofessional. I am mindful of many on several different news outlets. But particular to FOX, it is a feeding frenzy to characterize that FOX by any kind of negative example. The interviewer was ill-prepared and unprofessional — not unlike other interviewers on other news shows. FOX is no different, except that many who have never watched 10 minutes of it has a negative opinion based on the negative opinions of others who have maybe watched 30 minutes of it.

Fox is no more biased to the right than MSNBC is to the left. That being said, they both suck as far as trying to get any pertinent info/news. because every last bit of anything will involve pointing the finger at the other side. And when they point back, you just point harder. They don’t broadcast news, they broadcast emotion…..

Robert, you and I must have watched two different interviews. He lied about his credentials and some statements he said were in the book, were blatantly false.

If I’m going to read a book about someone stating it is historical fact, his/her background is directly relevant, especially when we know the vile way Islam has hijacked the Torah and the Bible and Jesus himself, among others.

“It’s about a historical man who walked the Earth 2000 years ago in a land that the Roman’s called Palestine.” Not exactly correct and a historian should know that. Jesus was crucified when he was 33 1/2 years old. The Romans didn’t change the name of Israel to Palestina, until 137AD, or over 100 years later. It was to erase any remembrance of Israel or Judah and Roman emperor Hadrian made up the word based on an extinct people, who inhabited that area before the time of the Romans, who were enemies of the Israelites, the Philistines.

That also lets you know there never were Palestinians, unless you want to consider the Jews, Palestinians. Those that refer to themselves as Palestinians today are Palestinian Arabs, implying Arabs occupying Palestine, otherwise known as Israel.

emaleroland is just another man with an agenda. The name Palestine pre-dates any Roman edicts by hundreds of years, and is in plenty of writings prior to the Common Era. I don’t even see why what the Roman’s call an area matter to you, but it’s neither here nor there when combined with the rest of the nonsense you spout.

Long’s article here is pure garbage. He should be embarrassed that he’s now being quoted all over the Web as the “sane voice of conservatism”. When the Left is using you as a voice of reason, rest assured that you are completely wrong.

Aslan offers up the same identical argument Muslims have done for 1400 years: “Jesus was a great person but not the Son of God or the Messiah.” That’s it. There’s nothing else relevant to Long’s argument. Suggesting we merely set aside our bias to consider the facts is preposterous because Aslan himself isn’t doing that. Long must be totally blind if he doens’t see that.

Da Truth: “Aslan offers up the same identical argument Muslims have done for 1400 years: ‘Jesus was a great person but not the Son of God or the Messiah.’” Uh, you are totally wrong about the Messiah part. “Numerous titles are given to Jesus in the Quran and in Islamic literature, the most common being al-Masīḥ (“the Messiah”). ” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam Muslims do deny that Jesus was the Son of God, but that’s a different matter.

The most anti-Jesus and anti-Christian rhetoric I’ve read had come from Jewish thinkers. Islam holds a special esteem for Jesus and see him as part of their theological discourse, while many Jewish thinkers rightly point out that Jesus’ mission was to undermine what would become modern day Judaism (Rabbinical Judaism and its ties to The Law). There was a time when I heard Jewish thinkers claim that Christianity and Islam are inherently anti-Jewish (or Semitic, I forget) because of the teachings of Jesus and how he viewed Jewish theology.

Mocking Jesus could still get you in trouble in most Islamic countries, while Jesus is fair game in “Judeo-Christian” society.